In my last post I mentioned not checking pockets well before putting the clothes in the washer. Want to hear how that turned out? It all started with a phone call…

Saturday evening we get a phone call from my son’s league bowling director. Could E substitute in the city tournament on Sunday for a sick bowler? E surprised me by saying yes. He had bowled in the team event that day but had opted out of the singles/doubles events on Sunday.

As I was getting ready for bed I realized E would need to wear his bowling shirt again. I picked it up off the floor (because where else would it be?) and saw a big stain on the front. Milk? Yogurt? Didn’t matter, it needed to be washed. I gather up a load of his clothes and toss them in the washer. An hour later I go down to put them in the dryer, only when I go to start the dryer there is this horrible grinding noise and the smell of burnt rubber. I look inside the dryer and don’t see anything weird so I try again with the same result. So there I am at 9:30 at night hanging laundry outside on the line.

Sunday afternoon my husband takes the back off the dryer so we can see if it is just a belt, in which case we will call a repairman, or if it is the motor which would mean a new dryer. As my husband is peering around my son yells, “hey there’s a pencil”! And sure enough there is a pencil stuck in the fan.

So the mystery is, how did a pencil get in there? My hypothesis is it somehow stayed in the pocket through the washer, came out in the dryer and managed to slip through a vent hole. Once the dryer stopped on the previous load the pencil ended up in the fan and when I went to start the dryer the pencil jammed the fan blades. Crazy!

How did a pencil line up just right to get through a small hole in a tumbling load of clothes? It’s a poser alright.

So now the dryer is all hunky dory again which means I have no excuse not to do laundry. Darn the luck.